Pen still works 25 years after being swallowed

21st December 2011

Doctors at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital Foundation Trust removed a pen from the stomach of a 76-year-old woman 25 years after she swallowed it by accident.

The find only came to light after the woman visited her doctor suffering from weight loss and diarrhoea and when questioned, remembered she had used a felt-tip pen to poke her tonsils and had fallen forward off a step and swallowed it. The pen, highlighted in a CT scan, had not caused her any gastric damage but the medical team decided to remove it as a precaution.